FLOSS4P2P Workshop: Call for Participation

A 2-day London workshop in March, gathering FLOSS projects that are building software for peer production and organization, with a focus on distributed platforms. *Scholarships* to attend are offered to grassroots communities.

** Context **

We know that the Internet was originally decentralized, with protocols and services built by hackers. However, with the arrival of the celebrated Web 2.0, centralization and corporations proprietary platforms seem to have taken over. Moreover, this centralized structure is used by governments to increase surveillance (following Snowden’s revelations), to blackout internet whenever it is needed (e.g. Egypt, Syria, or San Francisco’s BART) or to choke annoying activist organizations (such as Wikileaks).

On the other hand, in the last few years we have seen the emergence of Internet-enabled collaborative communities building shared libre/open resources. Commons-based Peer to Peer Production (CBPP) is rapidly growing: not just for software and encyclopedias, but also for information (OpenStreetMap, Wikihow), hardware (FabLabs, Open Source Ecology), accommodation (Couchsurfing) and currency (Bitcoin, Altcoins).

In the last few years, it has become clear to many that it is not enough to develop free/libre/open source (FLOSS) alternatives, but we also need to re-decentralize the Internet. Many initiatives are being undertaken under this premise (e.g. Ethereum, Diaspora, OwnCloud, MediaGoblin, Sandstorm). These new software tools may also be useful to boost CBPP communities further. In this workshop, we will gather those working around the decentralized FLOSS that could help CBPP/P2P communities. Hackers, academics, activists and interested stakeholders are welcome.

The workshop will have both presentations and unconference-style participatory dynamics for finding points of collaboration and extraction of conclusions.

** Topics **

Focus on FLOSS software with some of the following features:

Social: communication

e.g. social-networking, microblogging, reworked email

Social: collaboration

e.g. wikis, pads, wave, shared file hosting, multimedia repositories

Alternative to proprietary choices

Federated / Distributed / Interoperable

Open Standards

Secure / Encrypted

Encouraging Peer Production communities

Encouraging the construction/maintenance of Commons

Potential cases for discussion:

Diaspora (federated social network)

Wave (federated real-time collaboration)

Lorea (federated social network)

DarkWallet (distributed wallet & social network)

Ethereum (P2P infrastructure)

MaidSafe (P2P infrastructure)

Sandstorm.io (facilitates federated sw)

Mailpile (encripted email)

MediaGoblin (federated multimedia repository)

OwnCloud (file hosting)

… (your case)

**Scholarships**

There are a few scholarships for potential participants who wish to attend the event. The scholarship will cover participant’s travel and subsistence cost, up to €400. If you are interested in applying for the scholarship, please email: lu.yang@surrey.ac.uk before 28 February 2015, with a paragraph stating why you think your FLOSS is relevant, plus a short bio. Priority will be given to those with low resources, innovative FLOSS within the topics of the call, and being a grassroot community.